Beyond Leichhardt:
Bushcraft and the Exploration of Australia

Glen McLaren

Rather than another history of the explorers who mapped Australia,
Beyond Leichhardt is an account of the skills and techniques which
underlay their successes and failures. It is chronological, beginning
with the early, hesitant attempts at exploration and ending with the
widespread attainment of generalised competence. The expeditions
discussed include those of Oxley, Sturt, Mitchell, Grey, Leichhardt,
the Gregory and Forest brothers, Stuart, Giles, and the scientific
expeditions into the West Australian deserts in the 1890s.

McLaren does describe the formal scientific training, or lack thereof,
of the explorers and their companions, but this is clearly not his
main interest or an area where he has much expertise (he offers little
more than bland generalities on the subject). At the centre of his
attention are the more practical skills acquired by explorers over the
course of the century: the use of appropriate clothing, tent flies,
and other tools and equipment; the handling of Aboriginal contacts;
hunting and the use of bush foods; navigation; the move from carts and
bullocks to horses (and camels); the proper handling of these animals
(McLaren obviously has a firsthand knowledge of matters equestrian);
psychological adaptation to Australian conditions; and all the other
things that constitute "bushcraft".

The major failing of Beyond Leichhardt is that it lacks any kind of
unifying thesis and any structure other than the chronological. It has
nothing resembling an introduction or a conclusion: the opening chapter
is a sketchy seven page account of the rise of British scientific
societies; the closing chapter stops abruptly with the return of the
Horn expedition in 1896. McLaren jumps from topic to topic in a huge
area, spending time on whatever he finds most appealing. This leads
to a frustrating lack of focus; it is also somewhat odd given Beyond
Leichhardt's origins as a PhD thesis (the endnotes contain full
references).

A more minor complaint is that there is no discussion of the derivation
of bushcraft skills from Aboriginal sources. An account of Aboriginal
"bushcraft" would surely have made a more relevant opening chapter.

There is, however, a lot of interesting material in Beyond Leichhardt.
As a bushwalker I have always wondered about the logistic details of
extended expeditions and the equipment explorers carried; I found Beyond
Leichhardt a fascinating source of information on the subject.